The present invention relates to a manufacturing system and method for assembly of component parts to produce a finished article, e.g. a temperature sensor.
The manufacture of a finished article through several process steps involves the use of individual manufacturing sections having machines or system parts that are specifically constructed for this purpose and form a manufacturing chain through which each article being produced is advanced. Each link of this manufacturing chain is hereby supplied from a preceding machine in the manufacturing chain with component parts that are further processed in the respective process step or new components are added to a semi-finished article, so that the degree for finishing the article progressively increases from process step to process step. The component parts, respectively produced during a process step, are transferred in the manufacturing chain to the next following machine. As a result, each production unit of the manufacturing chain is directly coupled to the preceding production unit, so that the quantity of article components outputted from this production unit must continuously be processed by the next following production unit.
Articles of complex configuration require a great number of individual process steps, whereby each process step requires construction of a separate machine or system to carry out the manipulations of the component parts. Such steps involve in particular the addition of component parts to the respective semi-finished article, whereby processes, such as welding, screwing, soldering, riveting, stamping or the like, are employed. Optionally, there are, however, also checking and adjusting steps between these processes to make sure that manufacturing tolerances are observed and the finished article properly operates.
As a consequence of the sequential operation, the entire manufacturing chain is impacted when a link in the manufacturing chain breaks down, so that the production comes to a standstill because the system, affected by the breakdown, can no longer process the supplied component parts, and an excess accumulation of those component parts, which are produced in the manufacturing chain in the preceding systems, is encountered as the production chain has been configured for a continuous production.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved manufacturing system which obviates prior art shortcomings and which realizes a standardization of the system, provided for the individual process steps and permits the realization of shorter system downtimes and continuation of the production, even when individual system sections, responsible for the process steps fail.
It would also be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved manufacturing system which allows an expansion of the production capacity in a simple manner.